When bread is expensive, death becomes cheap

I heard it recently.

It is said to be an Armenian proverb.

I had never even heard anything like it before.

I have quite a few acquaintances among Armenians from my time in America.

I will write about them separately.

I heard it years ago from Kirkor Yeşilçimen, an Istanbulite I worked with at a gas station in New Jersey.

He used to say, "A shoe that travels much brings back much filth."

He used it while scolding his son, who wouldn't mend his ways from his womanizing.

The Armenians have beautiful proverbs, too.

Bread prices in our region are rising rapidly. 

There is no shortage yet, but the prices are abnormal.

Municipal bread is nothing more than a bread-like balloon with no nutritional value.

It is produced just to be able to say, "There is bread, and it is cheap."

Even this balloon costs 10 liras.

The prices of bread with nutritional value are abnormal.

You can barely buy it with the largest banknote.

Sourdough, dark, hard, antique-looking.

It whets one's appetite.

As our appetite grows, deaths around us also increase.

Primitive boats capsizing in the middle of the seas.

Corpses washing up on the shores.

Newborns dying in incubators.

As deaths increase, bread becomes more expensive. 

May bread prices fall as soon as possible, and may this beautiful proverb of the Armenians—who do not offer a prayer for us—hopefully not come to life in our immediate geography.